


peace of mind

by isawet



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 15:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11626593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: Lexa and Clarke are college roommates.Written for clexaweek and just now uploaded here.





	peace of mind

**Author's Note:**

> uploaded for archiving purposes, unbeta-ed.

Lexa and Clarke go out to dinner sometimes, after study group. Just the cheap on campus cafeteria, but Clarke needs to vent about the idiocy of the two idiots in her group and Lexa takes the time to set up her organizer for the week. 

“Someday,” Clarke is muttering, dark, “Someday I'll be free of these gen eds. I’m at the point where I’m anticipating organic chemistry, Lexa, I need you to take me seriously.”

Lexa makes a note in her phone, uncapped pastel highlighter in her mouth. “Mmhm,” she agrees around it. 

Clarke tips her flask into her mocha and pauses when Lexa doesn’t make her usual disapproving grumble. She kicks Lexa under the table and Lexa jerks, her highlighter falling. 

She glowers at Clarke. “Why?”

“I don’t like it when I sin and you don’t look down your nose at me.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. She takes the flask out of Clarke’s hands and drains it while Clarke gapes. 

“Thank you,” she says politely, and presses it into Clarke’s surprised limp hand.

“Wha–that was full.”

Lexa licks her lips. “Yes,” she agrees. Her face twists slightly. “Of cheap whiskey.”

Clarke stares at her. “That–this is an extra large flask. It’s for my purse–you just chugged like… eight shots.”

“Mm,” Lexa says. She recaps her highlighter and starts to pack away her things. “I’m going to take a walk along the river. Join me?”

“I better,” Clarke mutters, picking up the mess of her own papers and notebooks and cramming it into her shoulder bag. “You’re probably going to fall in and die.”

//

The river walk is cold and gorgeous and with the sun starting to sink away beneath the horizon, not as crowded as it usually is. Clarke tucks her hands into her sleeves and then stuffs them into her pocket and watches, bemused, and Lexa fades from her usual stride to a wander, and then a bit of an amble. She trips and giggles to herself and Clarke catches her by the elbow.

“Easy there, slugger.” 

Lexa shoots her a glare, devoid of its usual heat, and doesn’t struggle out of Clarke’s guiding hold. “I love the river,” she says, and links their fingers. She makes a pleased noise when Clarke allows it and Clarke rolls her eyes as she fights a smile. “I do,” she insists, even though Clarke hasn’t argued. “I love the grey.”

Matches your eyes, Clarke thinks. When you come in my room in the morning during the winter and your skin is steaming and the clouds blot out the sun. Your eyes match the sky before a blizzard. “I do too,” she says instead, and Lexa turns suddenly, catching Clarke by surprise and walking her off the footpath until her back hits the trunk of a tree. “Lexa–”

Lexa’s fingers touch her jaw, cradling and gently tipping it up. “Clarke,” she answers, and she smells like Clarke’s shitty whiskey and her own perfume, and her kiss is so so soft. Noses brushing when she switches sides and her fingers slipping into Clarke’s hair, Clarke’s hand frozen on her elbow.

Clarke breaks the kiss. “Hold on, I–woah!” She catches Lexa as her knees buckle, Lexa smiling into her collarbone where her shirt as fallen down. “I swear, if you say anything along the lines of ‘you make me weak’…”

Lexa hums and giggles and noses at Clarke’s neck while Clarke drags them back down the path, stumbling to pour Lexa into the passenger seat of her car. The streetlights have come on and the gold rectangles stutter on Lexa’s face, her jacket, the twisted strap of her bag.

“You do though,” she says, before she falls asleep, two minutes from their dorm and five minutes away from Clarke cursing while she drags Lexa’s dead weight on her back and tucks Lexa into her bed where she can keep an eye on her and give her water and aspirin and black coffee in the morning. “You do make me weak.”

//

Clarke comes into their room and Lexa is asleep on Clarke’s bed, an arm thrown over her face, her nose in the crook of her elbow. Clarke nudges her foot on her way to the old wooden dresser shoved against the shabby dorm room wall and Lexa hardly twitches.

Clarke showers and dresses in sweats and a shirt with holes in the hem, the logo faded away almost entirely. When she squeaks back into the room with the ends of her hair still drippy Lexa hasn’t moved an inch, her chest rising and falling gently and her breath snuffling in her nose.  
Clarke flicks the sole of her foot. “Hey.”

Lexa wakes with a jerk, sitting up with an almost yelp, glowering before her eyes have fully focused. “What,” she snaps, blinking quick and looking faintly disoriented.

“You’re on my bed.”

 

Lexa drags her hand through her hair, sleep mussed and the knots catching between her fingers. “Sorry.”

“Bad exam?”

Lexa exhales. She slumps slightly forward, her head between her hands and knuckles dug into her temples. “Group presentation.”

Clarke clucks, sympathetic. “Dinner?”

The furrow between Lexa’s brows deepens. “Library.”

“You sure?”

“Mm,” Lexa says, standing definitively. “Yes. Library.” She looks down at her feet, one sock on and the other disappeared somewhere. She blinks again, quizzical and owl eyed and Clarke has to smile. She crosses the room and rubs at the back of Lexa’s neck, affectionate. 

“Ramen first?”

“Okay,” Lexa agrees, slumping into Clarke’s touch. Clarke nudges her back down onto the bed, where Lexa sits cross legged and quiet, watching Clarke plug in the hot water kettle and fish two cup of noodles from the mess under the bed, her head propped on her palm and looking sleep soft and drowsy, heavy lidded and tiny yawns escaping.

Clarke hands her the noodles and the only fork. “I’ll drink mine.”

“Gross,” Lexa says, and scootches over so Clarke can settle next to her, passing the fork back and forth and eating quietly. When it’s finished Clarke sets everything to the side and stretches out on her back, nudging Lexa’s knee with her toes.

“Nap?”

Lexa frowns, her gaze on the wall. “It’s not a nap if it’s past six, it’s just going to sleep.”

Clarke rolls her eyes.

“I saw that.” Lexa sighs. “I’m too tired for the library.”

“Come here,” Clarke says, and when Lexa leans in she presses the back of her hand to Lexa’s forehead.

Lexa jerks away. “Asshole.”

“Nerd.”

Lexa slips off the mattress, stretching her fingertips to the ceiling until her shoulders crack. She goes on one foot, perfectly balanced, to tug off the final sock and cast it aside. The frame shakes as she climbs the edge of the frame to the top bunk, the strats creaking as she settles in. “The light,” she mutters, dropping a hand down into Clarke’s field of view to flap at her. “Clarke, the light.”

“Sleeping,” Clarke says, shoving the pillow under her own head and rolling a blanket over her.

Lexa makes a growly noise. “The light, Clarke.”

“Do it yourself.”

Lexa squawks. “Are you seriously this lazy?”

Clarke raises a leg and nudges at the top bunk, poking Lexa through the strats and the mattress. “How long have we known each other?” Lexa growls. She rolls over three times, dramatically large movements and audible grumbly sighing. Clarke kicks her again. “Just throw something at the lightswitch.”

There’s a short, offended silence. Then Lexa’s pillow flies from the foot of the bunk beds, thumping against the light switch on the wall before falling to the floor, the light still shining somehow bright and dull at the same time in that college dorm room way. Clarke snickers.

Lexa’s face appears, hanging upside down to glare, her hair falling about her face. “You’re being childish.”

Clarke shrugs. “If you want it off that bad, climb down and turn it off.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Clarke.”

“Laa-zy,” Clarke murmurs, sing-song. “Your face is turning red, by the way.”

“I hate you,” Lexa informs her. Her head disappears. “Now I don’t have a pillow.” She sighs again.

Clarke is annoyed at herself for being so amused, this fond undercurrent of something cutting under the fun of poking at Lexa’s buttons, to see her usually stoicness fall away. There’s something so endearing about Lexa when it’s just them, her guard softened and her willingness to be childish and pouty and sulky when they’re alone. Clarke tosses her extra pillow up, hooking her arm so the pillow arcs and lands on the top bunk.

“Thank you,” Lexa says, after a pause so long Clarke is almost asleep. Clarke hums, acknowledging. “I hate group projects,” Lexa mutters, and Clarke slips to sleep still smiling.

//

Clarke is tapping away at an English paper when she hears the key in the lock, and she flicks her music to silent, digging in a drawer for her headphones.

Lexa comes in with a stormcloud face, her fingers flexed into fists. “I hate,” she says, subzero freezing cold, “people.”

Clarke pauses, her head tilted. “Group grades come in?”

Lexa’s face darkens further. “Idiots.” She yanks her shoulderbag off and hurls it aside, furious. It slams into Lexa’s deskchair in the corner and falls to the floor with a jangle. Clarke hopes her tablet wasn’t in there. Lexa paces, muttering to herself.

“We should go for a run,” Clarke suggests, abrupt.

Lexa stops mid turn and stares at her. She’s silent for a long time.

“Hello? Lexa?”

“You are attempting to shock me out of my ill-temper,” Lexa concludes.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “You’ve gone robotic, you know how you get. Nothing will be better until you get those endolphins.”

“Endolphin–Clarke, you’re _pre-med_ –”

“That was my attempt to surprise you out of your sulk.” Lexa puffs up like a bird, drawn up and affronted, and Clarke stands with a scrape of her chair, going over to dig through her mess of a clothing pile on the mattress. She comes up with shorts and a sports bra. “Change?”

“You–you want to run with me.”

“Right,” Clarke agrees. She casts a dark look at her laptop. “Hemingway’s been dead for over fifty years, he can wait another hour.”

//

“I changed my mind,” Clarke gasps, “this is awful. Take me back. No wait, kill me here.”

“This is my favorite trail,” Lexa tells her, annoyingly not winded in the slightest. “Most people don’t seem to know about it.”

“No shit,” Clarke mutters. “It’s basically the outback.”

Lexa smiles, sudden and as full as she ever does, which means a soft upwards curl of her lips and a hint of teeth; her smiles have always been more in her eyes than her mouth. She slows smoothly, from a jog to a trot to an easy cooldown walk, graceful and long legged. Clarke stops so abruptly she almost pitches herself off the tiny trail. Lexa walks beside her, guiding them back around and heading back towards the dorms. “I do feel better,” she admits. “Thank you, Clarke.”

“Ticks,” Clarke mutters. She twists around to see the backs of her knees, imaginary itches prickling her skin.

Lexa’s smile turns up, wider than Clarke has ever seen it, the hint of an almost dimple in her cheek. When Clarke trips over nothing Lexa catches her firmly by the elbow, sweat slick fingers slipping on her skin. “Thank you,” she says again, and Clarke just nods, something caught low in her throat and high in her chest, swelling and hard to push away.

They walk back with shoulders bumping and when Clarke shivers Lexa shucks her zip hoodie and drapes it around Clarke’s shoulders, sweat damp and smelling like the detergent Clarke filches every other Sunday when Lexa stands by the door with hands on her hips and says _laundry_ ominously every five seconds until Clarke curses her and shoves everything into a hamper and lets Lexa drag her to the basement to stuff quarters into the old machines and quiz each other with flashcards over the rumble of them.

//

Clarke has been awake for forty seven hours. She knocked on Raven’s door in a fugue state and then stood behind Raven in the shitty shared floor kitchen while Raven made turkish coffee on the stove and dumped it in a thermos with a shot of monster and a murmured Hail Mary. 

“Engineer’s trick. Don’t chug it,” she says, shoving the thermos into Clarke’s hands with a yawn and a commiserating clap to her back. “You’ll die.” She disappears back into her room with a thumbs up for good luck and Clarke staggers back to work.

She wakes up in a pile of cold drool, disoriented and all time sense lost. She almost has a heart attack while her eyes work on focusing on her phone clock, but her work is printed and her cheat sheet highlighted and she makes it to her first midterm with two minutes to spare.

//

“Hello,” she says, nearly six hours later. “I think I have entered the next dimension.”

Lexa peers down at her. “You’re on the floor of the science building, Clarke. People have been stepping over you for forty-five minutes.”

“They can step through me,” Clarke informs her. “I have ascended.”

“Raven texted me. There have been four yik-yaks about you in the last half-hour.”

“Fame follows death,” Clarke says. “So that makes sense.” Lexa manhandles her up to her feet and drapes Clarke on one of her shoulders. Clarke shuffles along, stumbling half blind and Lexa’s hair tickling her nose. “You smell like me.”

“You smell like _me_ ,” Lexa corrects. “It’s my detergent.”

“No way,” Clarke says, as Lexa props her against the wall to fish the key out of her bag. “I’m sneaky. Like a fox.”

“Of course you are,” Lexa says. She’s suddenly very close, her hand gentle on Clarke’s hip as she guides Clarke inside to her bed.

“This is death,” Clarke informs the upper bunk. She can feel Lexa tugging her shoes off, setting Clarke’s sneakers gently on the floor. Clarke knows she’s tucking the laces inside just as well as she knows that Lexa is putting her socks into the correct hamper as soon as she frees them from Clarke’s feet.

Plastic creaks by her face and she turns her head with considerable effort to see Lexa place an open bottle of water on the nightstand. A wet cloth runs over her face and Clarke sighs, wiggling down into her bed. Lexa tucks a blanket around her shoulders and then hesitates, looking down at Clarke, the lights dimmed far enough Clarke can’t quite make out her expression. “Go to sleep,” Lexa murmurs. She dips, and her lips press against Clarke’s temple above her hair, a soft dry press.

//

“You promised,” Clarke accuses.

Lexa frowns at her. “I am tired,” she tries.

Clarke points, triumphant. “No contractions! Liar.”

Lexa looks shifty. “Grammar,” she begins. Clarke makes a high pitched scoffing noise. “Fine,” Lexa concedes. “One party.”

 

“Fine,” Lexa says, in Raven’s dorm room, trading lacrosse scars with Octavia and absolutely destroying Clarke in a game of quarters. “One shot.”

 

“Okay,” Lexa says, her beer tipped up and the last drops sliding into her mouth, her throat working and her collarbones sharply defined, her top shimmering under the shitty lights. “One club.”

 

“One dance,” Lexa agrees, tipsy and loose limbed and smelling like peppermint schnapps, almost giggly and her body pressed to Clarke’s. Clarke can feel the bass in her chest and the play of coloured lights on her skin. She feels flushed and drunk and her blood hums when Lexa moves to the beat.

 

It’s four in the morning and they’re doing the drunk girl stumble through the hallways, trying to stay quiet and mostly failing, giggling and harsh whisper shouting. It takes a team effort of about four minutes to get the key in the lock and they fall into their room, staggering to Clarke’s bottom bunk and collapsing atop the mattress.

“Fuck,” Clarke mutters, “fuck, I’m so fucked up.” She’s half fallen on Lexa, a leg over Lexa’s hip and her hand on Lexa’s ribcage under her shimmery grey top. She props herself up on Lexa’s sternum, making Lexa grunt and wriggle, and she blinks through the curtain of her own hair. 

“Hi.”

“Clarke,” Lexa says, a little slurred but somehow just the same way she’s always said her name, years and years of history between them and Clarke has thought about this in the way that she ever thinks about anything important, but it seems all very far away. She thinks if she were Lexa she’d have lists and logic and thoughtful self-reflection, but she’s Clarke and she’s drunk and Lexa tastes like maraschino cherries and midori sours and Clarke tastes like dark whiskey and it feels right, to map Lexa’s slim frame with her palms and trace her nails along Lexa’s muscles and feel her arch when Clarke bites at the column of her throat.

//

“Hello,” Clarke can hear Lexa greet, stiff in her awkwardness–and, if the pounding in Clarke’s own head is any indication, a wicked hangover– “May I speak to Clarke?”

“You may,” Raven says, opening the door wider and ignoring Clarke’s silent flailing. “I have things to do and no time for this. Good luck and we’ll get lunch later?”

“Okay,” Lexa agrees. She enters the room and shuts the door behind her. Clarke refuses to meet her eyes, picking at the pulled threads of Raven’s bedspread. “You’re being childish.”

“Maybe I am childish. Wah.” Lexa is silent and Clarke looks up–Lexa is in sweats. Not her team issued athletic pants, expensive and tailored well enough they could pass for semi-business casual in California. Her sweatpants, the ones she wears when she’s sick and swaying with fever and on the first day of her period when she curls in a ball in Clarke’s bed because the ladder is too difficult and throws up into a paper bag while Clarke rubs her back and coaxes water down her throat. Lexa never wears those pants outside their room, not even to the bathroom to shower, and the sight of them is enough for Clarke’s eyes to snap up to meet Lexa’s gaze. “I was wahhing,” Clarke finds herself explaining, “because it’s a baby noise.”

“I understood.”

“Oh.”

Lexa shifts–she’s barefoot in her shower flip flops, faded blue rubber that squeaks under her weight, her toes painted pale pink. “I did not enjoy,” she says, slow, “waking up alone.”

Clarke’s chest constricts. She rests her head in her hands. “I know,” she admits. “It was shitty.”

“Yes,” Lexa agrees. Her eyes are fixed on a point somewhere above Clarke’s left shoulder. 

“There is no need to hide. I’ll submit the transfer papers within the hour and admit all fault.”  
She turns to leave and Clarke scrambles to catch her, pitching forward in her haste, tripping over her own feet and falling into Lexa, inadvertantly pinning her against the closed door. 

“What?” she blurts.

“Ow,” Lexa responds, slightly delayed. Her eyes cross before focusing on Clarke’s face, very close to her own.

“Why should you admit fault and move out? I kissed you. I should admit fault.”

“I don’t want you to move out,” Lexa argues. She frowns. “The amount of clothing under your bed alone would take–”

“Shut up.” Lexa’s jaw clicks. Clarke takes a deep breath. “Do you want to move out?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to move out?” Lexa hesitates, her mouth half open in response. “Lexa?”

Lexa shakes her head. She places her hands, very gently, on Clarke’s shoulders, and presses her back. The door creaks on old hinges when she opens it. “You left,” she reminds Clarke. “I’m the one who followed.”

//

Clarke waits in lotus position outside Lexa’s ethics lecture. After ten minutes her ass hurts and her feet are numb and she goes to the coffee cart for that sweet white chocolate thing Lexa pretends she doesn’t like. The line takes forever and she shifts on her feet while waiting, checking her watch and snatching the drink from the counter.

She catches up to Lexa halfway down the steps of the building, her hand skimming the railing. “Lexa!”

“Clarke,” Lexa greets, her shoulders tightening, her eyes guarded.

“I got you–” Clarke sees the name written on the white cup and tosses it into a passing garbage can. “A present. In our room.”

“What is it?”

“A… surprise,” Clarke responds, weakly.

//

“For you,” Clarke says, her voice rising in a half-question. Lexa looks at her, then the item in her outstretched hand.

“One sock.”

“It’s the rage,” Clarke tells her, “trust me.”

“It’s yours.”

“A token of my regard for our friendship.”

“It’s dirty.”

Clarke tosses the sock over her shoulder. “Obviously I didn’t have a present Lexa, Christ. I just want to talk to you.”

Lexa crosses her arms. “So talk.”

There’s a prolonged silence. Clarke clears her throat several times. “Um,” she manages.

Lexa doesn’t roll her eyes, but it looks like a near thing. “I’m going to the library.”

“We should have sex,” Clarke blurts. Lexa’s eyes widen. Her phone falls from her fingers.

“What?”

“Holy shit,” Clarke says, “your screen cracked.”

“We should have sex?”

“You should get a case–one time, I dropped mine out the window during a housefire–”

“Clarke.”

“Well we should.” Clarke folds her arms across her chest. “We should have sex. Regularly. In my bed, because I’m scared of falling from yours. And we should… kiss and stuff.”

“Date,” Lexa suggests. Clarke blanches.

“Kiss and stuff.”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “Hold hands.”

Clarke considers it. Lexa’s fingers between hers, the press of her palm, linked arms across campus and tugging her close for soft kisses. “Acceptable.”

“Cuddling,” Lexa negotiates.

“Post-coital,” Clarke agrees. “And when I’m cold.”

“We already cuddle regularly,” Lexa points out.

Clarke waves a hand in the air. “Irrelevant.”

Lexa has started to smile now, just a little, soft and sweet and almost happy. “Exclusive.”

“Obviously.” Lexa is advancing now, slow and careful, until Clarke’s back bumps up against the dresser. “Anything else?”

Lexa’s hand is on her shoulder, sliding around to cup the back of her neck. “I’ll think of something,” she murmurs, and their noses brush when their eyes cross, just before they kiss.

//

“We can try again,” Lexa suggests. “Maybe you’re tired.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“It happens to everyone–” Lexa ducks when Clarke throws a pillow at her.

“We should get naked,” Clarke decides. “It’ll be awkward for like five seconds. So just–just get naked, and I’ll get naked, and we’ll be naked together.”

She turns, decisive, stripping quickly and letting her clothes fall into a haphazard pile at her feet. Lexa sighs. “If you just put things away when you took them off, it wouldn’t–”

“Oh my god,” Clarke says, hands on her hips. “Is this really the time for this?” She turns, exasperated.

Lexa points at Clarke’s bra on the floor. “This is a shared living space–” she goes silent, abrupt, wide eyed. “You’re–” she swallows, twice. Her eyes flicker up and down. “Clarke,” she says, soft.

Clarke slides onto the bed, her knee braced onto the mattress. Lexa touches her, uncertain at first and then gaining confidence, learning the curves of Clarke’s body, lingering around the swell of her belly and the flare of her hips before tracing up. Clarke undresses her quietly, with a sort of reverence–Lexa isn’t wearing a bra, and her skin pebbles in the cold air. She sighs soft and easy when Clarke kisses the center of her chest and then just under her chin. “Not so awkward,” Clarke murmurs against her shoulder, dropping an affectionate nuzzling kiss against the curl of her bicep. “My ideas are the best ideas.”

“Cheeto beef jerky soup,” Lexa says, half breathless but still teasing.

“Shut up,” Clarke says, and kisses her proper, for only the fourth ever time.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think and catch me on tumblr @ sunspill


End file.
